His Choice
by Inka Lakhala
Summary: Erestor has to make a decision. But will it cause more pain to accept or to decline? SLASHY but perfectly clean.


Title: His Choice  
  
Author: Inka  
  
Rating: G  
  
Pairing: Glorfindel/Erestor  
  
Summary: Erestor has to make a decision. But will it cause more pain to accept or to decline?  
  
Disclaimer: Middle Earth and all the fell beasts and gorgeous Elves in it all belong to Professor Tolkien. Including these two darlings. He can have them back whenever he wants.  
  
A/N: I have absolutely no idea where this came from. The main text has been sitting around for ages - the envelope POV bits appear to have originated at the bottom of a coffee cup. I am not entirely sure what is happening here, and it's completely apropos de rien, I suspect.  
  
A/N2: Updated 7th May 04. Sindarin corrected (thanks to Namárië an Lalaith for pulling me up, and Orchyd Constyne for being the Canon Queen).  
  
"You must let him find that happiness where he will."  
  
Those words had been spoken years ago now, but I always trusted the one who spoke them implicitly, and I still do. Do I regret Erestor's decision? Never. Do I feel slighted that he chose to let her in? No, because ever since, there has been an aura of serenity about him that I had never before seen. We are devoted to each other, as ever.  
  
Only now, I know that he is more than just the dark, reserved and quiet Sinda I fell in love with. He has a duty to another as well; I suppose it could be said that he is no longer all mine.  
  
He stood in the garden, face shadowed by the velvet folds of his hood, save where the sunrise brushed his delicate cheekbones in amber-gold. "I had a dream last night," he said, and there were tears in his voice. Glorfindel could not tell whether they spoke of sadness or joy. "You know that these days, I seldom dream...save the nightmares. But this time...this time, she was there, and she spoke to me." He glanced across, and met Glorfindel's troubled gaze with expressive eyes of the blackest jet. "Her voice was fairer than any music any Elf could spin."  
  
"She? Who is she?"  
  
"Lady Nienna...she wept, and she held me in her arms, and under her tears, all the old wounds began to heal, and all the old scars faded." Oh, Erestor carried so many scars - almost as many as Glorfindel. But while those of the golden-haired warrior were almost all worn on the outside, proud trophies of his prowess in battle with orcs, Easterlings and wargs, Erestor's scars were mostly the internal scars of memory, painful welts of a bitter past. An unloved child of a violent and abusive father, a fearful flight of terror, millennia of loneliness, tragic losses... "When she smiled, the pain was gone." He sighed. "Penvain, she loved me so much...and she assured me the she has that same love for any of Eru's children. I wasn't sure I could stand it - it was truly that intense - but I did, and it was so, so beautiful."  
  
Glorfindel took his dearest love in the tenderest, most sincere of embraces, kissing his forehead, stroking his hair, glad that Erestor had found, for once, such total peace. Not for a moment did he doubt that this was a true-dream, and that it was, in truth, Lady Nienna herself with whom Erestor had spoken. But at his lover's next words, he felt his heart wrench, and no longer knew what to feel. "Penvain, you are the only Elf I have ever loved - the only I Elf I will ever love - and you, I love with all my heart and soul. But you know how deeply I have been hurt, and how many times I have been torn between duty and the desire for peace. You know how the old wounds still pain me." Glorfindel merely nodded in understanding, not trusting his voice. "When I was with Lady Nienna, all that disappeared. She has the power to soothe that pain, but she explained to me that to continue to do so outside my dreams, I would have to..."  
  
"You would have to?"  
  
"...open myself to her - my heart, my thoughts, everything. I would have to allow her to place a little of herself within me. Nienna would become, you understand, a part of me at all times."  
  
"But with that, you would get healing?" Glorfindel squeezed Erestor's hand, studying the pale, earnest face, trying to understand what his lover meant.  
  
"Yes. Glorfindel, I needed to tell you this now...I want us to make the decision, together."  
  
Glorfindel shook his head. "Meleth, this choice is yours, and yours alone."  
  
"Penvain, I do not wish to see you hurt. I do not wish to see you unhappy, knowing all the time that my heart is no longer entirely yours." Erestor was weeping openly now, as he almost never did, the moisture clinging to his long eyelashes as he averted his eyes and tried to blink the tears away.  
  
"And I do not wish to see you live, knowing that you could have found such perfect happiness, but turned it down. Erestor, my heart, my love, your happiness is more important to me than even life itself. Whatever you choose, you know I will be at your side, for as long as you permit me."  
  
They clung to each other, each knowing in his heart that a sacrifice was about to be made.  
  
He chose. He chose wisely, I think. And I love him forever, and it gladdens my heart to see him smile and laugh as he never used to.  
  
But sometimes, in rare moments, when we exchange a sideways glance at a council meeting or some such, I wonder is if is him, or her, who glances back at me through those shining obsidian eyes.  
  
Meleth = love  
  
Penvain = fair one 


End file.
